


the mutual jeopardy makes me feel safer

by takingyournarrative



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Fluff, Grieving, M/M, Self-Worth Issues, Urban Fantasy, and also not soft blood drinking, but it has a happy/hopeful ending I promise, like a shocking amount of angst, one very vague death wish, soft blood drinking, super vague religious imagery I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28470549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takingyournarrative/pseuds/takingyournarrative
Summary: When Gerry Keay found him crying in the church basement and took his hands and pressed his mouth against them — infinitely soft, unbearably gentle, and suddenly, suddenly the only warm thing in the world — it was like his heart cracked open, something good and right and familiar spilling from a shattered encasement. The first right thing in the world, and it was his tears on Gerry’s lips when he kissed them away.in which there is a very loud city and also vampires
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael Shelley
Comments: 20
Kudos: 45





	the mutual jeopardy makes me feel safer

**Author's Note:**

> winter exchange fic for beau! i hope you enjoy, happy new year and sorry for the angst <3
> 
> title from only lovers left alive, which is a good movie people should watch and also about vampires.

Morality had always been a difficult question for Michael. It mattered — too much, it mattered, even when he didn’t want it to. He meant to do right by his family, his friends, the beliefs that might have been his and might have been theirs and might have only been a pretense all along. 

When Gerry Keay found him crying in the church basement and took his hands and pressed his mouth against them — infinitely soft, unbearably gentle, and suddenly, suddenly the only warm thing in the world — it was like his heart cracked open, something good and right and familiar spilling from a shattered encasement. The first right thing in the world, and it was his tears on Gerry’s lips when he kissed them away. 

Whether it was wrong crossed his mind more than once, but Gerry would brush his hair and smile at him like happiness was a rebellion and whisper a request for permission and he would stop wondering and kiss him. Gerry kissed Michael like he was necessary and fragile all at once, held him close with a hand on his back and the other tangled in his hair, and Michael was secure in more ways than one. 

Nights, Michael watched the streetlights blur together through his window, the blues and reds of the city smudged further off on the horizon, and thought about Gerry, and a place far away from lights and smoke and traffic and people, and something soft and something dandelion-yellow and something like polished wood melting in the sunlight. It was harder to keep track of what he was supposed to be these days, and he wasn’t entirely certain that he minded. 

Gerry adored Michael Shelley — maybe he had always loved him; it was impossible to tell. He remembered him a thousand times over, quiet and freckle-faced and curly-haired in the backs of gatherings and the corners of classrooms. A smile that was uncommon and uncommonly beautiful. Eyes like the sky before a storm broke. Things he wasn’t even certain he had noticed back then, but which were now so essential to the way he looked at his Michael that they were everywhere.

Loving Michael was a hurricane that he weathered gladly, something like a resolution and something like a revolt. He wanted this, and he was allowed so little of what he wanted. “Come here,” he had said; and when he had opened his arms Michael had sunk into them and held him with as much strange certainty as he felt, and that had been the end or the beginning of everything.

Better still, Michael was a friend. Having someone to kiss was wonderful, good in the most significant sense of the word; having someone to run with was better. Ultimately, vitally, it all came down to the grin on Michael’s face and the flicker of his eyes, his hand in Gerry’s as they explored some back room or dark alley. He was clever. He was determined. Gerry adored him.

And they were determined to do right — there were whispers in the corners of crowded parties with their overpolite half-strangers and boxmade brownies, the murmurings of their parents over the news at night, and they knew there was much to be afraid of and little to do.

“Michael,” said Gerry, hanging upside-down over the edge of the bed, and Michael looked up from the floor with that sweet half-attentive smile and Gerry was warm. “D’you ever think about … hunting them?”

There was no question who he meant by  _ them _ . Vampires, blood-drinkers, villains, back in the city in droves and more people vanishing to them every day. For all their parents tried to drown their whispers in their punch-cups and hide their mouths behind gold-banded fingers they heard. They were seventeen, they were breaking more rules than one, and they were curious. Of course they heard.

The corners of Michael’s mouth tugged upward and Gerry knew it was expected, knew that he was predictable or that Michael, at least, could predict him and maybe that wasn’t the same thing at all. Dimples in his freckled cheeks that Gerry wanted to kiss, but he always wanted to kiss Michael and he had all the time in the world. It could wait. He wanted an answer and Michael was easily distracted.

“Sometimes. D’you think we should?”

Gerry grinned. He loved that. That easy bravery disguised as a question. He was fiercely determined and he hid it behind helpfulness and concession. It was strange and wonderful and Gerry turned over, took his face in his hands, and kissed him. 

“You’re perfect. Yeah, I think we should. When do we start?”

He watched Michael giggle and collect himself, the blush fading from his face, red falling to pink falling to something soft that made him glow. An idol and a friend. He was both. He was lovely. “Tonight,” he said, because Michael never left anything for tomorrow.

Gerry knew the adoration was palpable in his eyes as he nodded, and he was glad of it because he wanted Michael to see this, to understand his love. “Tonight.”

There were soft strong hands helping him through the window and Michael’s heart beat fast with anticipation. “We didn’t plan this very well.”

Gerry grinned at him. “And? There’s beauty in spontaneity.”   
“And danger.” Michael shot him a glance but that high fevered thrill was in his eyes and he knew Gerry would not be talked out of it now. It bolstered him, anyway, so he let Gerry’s excitement fill him in turn and felt his heart flutter out of love or eagerness or both. The night was dark and it smelled like smoke, the first chills of autumn not quite stitched into the air. “Ready?” 

Farther off the blue light on the top of the highest building in the city flickered. It was an invitation and Michael nodded. Gerry took his hand and tightened his grip just briefly — an encouragement? A reassurance? A press of chapped lips against his cheek and then the telltale rattle of bike chains, worried glances at the windows where Michael’s parents slept, and the whir of wheels over old tarmac.

It was good. Biking at night with Gerry, bound for something neither of them really understood. The promise that maybe they could make things better; the knowledge that even if they couldn’t, they would have this, the cold night-breeze on their faces and the artificial groves of suburbia giving way to dilapidated storefronts and glass. Darkness and chill and Gerry to his left, hair streaming behind his head because he never wore a helmet, and Michael felt warm just knowing he was there. Gerry burned; Gerry was a soft furious star and he radiated heat and Michael was wrapped up in it and it felt like safety. Quiet laughter on the wind, the tripping notes of Michael’s giggles falling behind them to tumble down over the ground and get lost somewhere on the side of the road. 

They left their bikes outside the public library and stood there for a minute, uncertain where to go now that they had arrived. The city was vast and it hummed with motion, dark things in the shadows by the sidewalk, too many bright buzzing lights swarming at the tops of buildings. 

“Hold my hand,” said Gerry. It was the closest he would ever come to admitting he was afraid, and Michael knew it. Absently, deliberately, he pressed his lips to Gerry’s fingers and felt them relax just slightly. 

“Should we just … start walking?” He was biting his lip and surely it would split in the dry air, even if it was slightly warmer here than at home. Gerry must have noticed the same because Michael felt his fingers touch his mouth, hover until he let go. Gently, barely brushing the skin, Gerry’s finger traced his lower lip — searching for injuries or maybe just soothing. He smiled into the touch and met Gerry’s eyes, amber in the low light.

“Yeah, let’s go.” Clinging to one another, hands clasped tight, uncertain. They relaxed as they walked, settled into the thrum of the city — never quite at ease, but finding some kind of rhythm, some precarious harmony with the night threatening to consume them.

“What do they even look like?” Michael whispered, and he felt more than saw Gerry shrug.

“We’ll know when we see them, probably.”  _ Or when they try to attack us _ , but neither of them said it.

Their search that night was fruitless — the alleys were empty, the only people out on the street shivering and just as wary as they were. Blue and red light and cars that paid mind to nothing and nobody, bound for another world unintersected by anyone wandering on foot this time of night. Michael was cold by the end of it, pressed close against Gerry’s arm, seeking his warmth through the layers of their coats. 

It was easy to be wary but hard to be really afraid when tiredness began to press on them, when the lights grew bright and dizzy in their eyes and the shadows shrunk into their corners, unobtrusive and harmless. “Should we go home?” mumbled Gerry. “I think it’s getting on toward morning.” Michael just hummed, nodded against his shoulder, and he heard Gerry laugh under his breath, endeared.

They found their bicycles locked up where they had left them, cold metal and maybe a little more thickly covered in the dust of the city. It was hard to say. “You’re gonna be okay riding that home?” Gerry asked. “We could try to catch a shuttle.” But Michael shook his head and mounted and they were riding back through the grey dredges of nighttime.

When they arrived at Michael’s house dawn was shivering somewhere just below the horizon, weak white light more of a feeling than a presence. Gerry cupped Michael’s face in his hands and kissed him — kissed him a little breathless, maybe, the exhilaration of a long night and the unbarred intimacy of exhaustion bringing him closer, more vulnerable than he would have been at midday. 

“I love you,” he whispered against Michael’s lips, and Michael shivered and let the words settle in his veins, press up against his heart like soft stones, sea-polished.

“I love you too.” Another kiss, a lingering of fingers in Michael’s curls, and Gerry was back on his cycle and riding away, disappearing into the morning. Michael was back inside and pretending to be asleep before his parents could check on him. 

It became a habit. Not every night — sleep and church schedules and school kept them early in bed most evenings — but whenever they could. Scrambling down the trellis outside Michael’s window; breathless night-drunk bicycle rides into the city, the taste of artificial light and ungentle noise. 

Sometimes they thought they found what they were seeking — a torn piece of a shirt collar, bloodstained; a dried brown stain on a wall; a figure in an alley that looked at them with hunger in its eyes and which they fled. Afterwards, Michael cursed their cowardice, but Gerry shook his head and said they were right to be safe, that they needed more practice and maybe a plan.

They never had time. It was mid-December and the first snow of the year was falling during the night. By morning there would be a blanket over the city and its suburbs, soft white and impersonal and safe. They went anyway, paid no attention to the snowflakes crowding in front of their eyes on the roads, pedalled maybe a little slower for fear of slipping on the icy roads.

The city was different in a snowfall — at once calmer and livelier, the threat drained out of it, relaxed. New tangles of lights outlined doorframes and windowpanes, glittered in the windows of every other apartment. Everything was very silent. 

“Should be an easy night,” said Gerry, taking Michael’s mittened hand in his. Michael nodded, grinning. It felt closer to a date than a hunt, and he was almost light as they left the library behind and wandered deeper into the maze of buildings.    
It was impossible to be afraid. Impossible, with Gerry’s hand in his and the instinct to catch snowflakes on his tongue (“Don’t do that,” said Gerry, “the air isn’t clean here,” but Michael just rolled his eyes and blew him a kiss). Their voices raised just a little higher than was wise, inhibitions forgotten in the softness and the silence and the white. 

And so they almost did not notice the shadows shift halfway down a cramped street. Gerry didn’t. Michael hung back, and then the door was open and he almost had time to scream; and then the door was shut with a hollow sound and the rattling of a lock. 

There was a long moment where Gerry stood, half-turned in the street, staring at the place where the snow had been scored through to the tarmac by Michael’s boots. Gently, gently the snowflakes tumbled out of the sky, which was blank, void, suffocating, and fear was ice expanding in his veins, tearing his heart like streets breaking in February. The thing blocking his throat was slippery and ready to fragment, and then it was broken and his vocal cords were ribbons and maybe that’s why he was choking — just choking, not screaming or sobbing or crying for help but a harsh, ragged choking in the back of his throat. 

He stumbled forward toward the door, overstepped, slammed bodily against the frame. His fingers were cold — he never brought gloves, Michael always said he should bring gloves — and he forced them around the doorknob, rattled it, but the door would not move.

Mumbling something — curses, maybe, or self-hatred, or fury, or a plea — he beat the door until he was tired, and then he sank into the snow and finally, finally, found himself able to cry. There was nothing worse than this. There was nothing worse than his own terrible idea collapsing around them because he had been too slow and too inattentive to protect Michael. Michael who was more than capable but who was so vital, so terribly important, Michael with eyes like a storm about to break, Michael who was quiet and freckle-faced and curly-haired, Michael with his smile that was uncommon and uncommonly beautiful. 

The snow turned to rain as he wandered back toward the library, dead-eyed and defeated. There was nothing to do and nothing to say, and Michael’s parents’ hearts would break for the son they barely seemed to love and Gerry did not want to care but he did not want to  _ explain _ . Everything felt sick — the snow turning to slush beneath his feet and washing down the filthy drains, the moon hovering weak and quivering from behind the clouds, the idle careless patterns of the half-dead stars. There were tears dried and frozen on his face and he took Michael’s bike instead of his own. 

It did not get better. If anything, it got worse. Confined to his house, where his mother only rolled her eyes and said he would have done better not to meddle with things he didn’t understand, and that the Shelley boy was a fool anyway. She made herself so easy to hate but his guilt was too all-consuming to be ignored and he resigned himself to going without that catharsis for a while. 

There were bars on his window and the staircase creaked. He didn’t know why he would want to leave — some mad dash to save Michael would probably do more harm than good — but he wanted at least to have the option. To feel like he wasn’t trapped in the house when he already felt the walls in his mind closing, pinning him to the thoughts he wanted so badly to ignore. 

He would not be permitted to forget that it was his fault his perfect, beautiful Michael Shelley was gone. 

Really, he did not want to forget. But he couldn’t just hold guilt and anger inside of him — they were eating away at his stomach, stronger than acid, and he needed movement, needed night air on his cheeks or the sting of tarmac on scraped knees or the electric shock of Michael’s kiss. Needed anything but this, but dinner and bed and Mary’s icy silence and the quiet clatter of her fork against her plate. 

It was enough, eventually, to drop a rope from the upper bathroom window and hope his weight didn’t break the door where it was tied. Enough to walk into the city where his bicycle was probably rusting and let the ache in his legs be a punishment as much as it was a reward. Winter had blossomed full force, hard and cold over the land, and it was iron and hatred and the air bit his cheeks red and too late he missed feeling them blush. 

It was dark and he had no flashlight, but he knew the way to the city by heart, mapping the cracks in the sidewalk and the bent branches of trees somewhere in the back of his mind that hardly registered as thought. Closer to the city, streetlamps and apartment lights blinked back into view, and he wanted to touch that warmth and wanted to throw himself down on the side of the road and freeze to death. 

His bike wasn’t outside the library after all — the lock lay broken on the ground, so maybe some petty thief was getting use out of it. He hoped so. He wandered on, unsure where he was going or why or whether he had an aim at all. 

_ Michael _ , his mind said, and he wondered why he bothered holding on to hope like this when he knew Michael was never coming back. He missed him — he missed him like sea salt tossed on dry ground, like honey out of the hive, like a fire misses the spark that began it. His eyes had ached for a month now — tears had a cost and he paid it whether he wanted to or not. 

It was a while before he found the place where he had lost Michael — the streets were uniform and dark, and last time he had been too distracted by the heat of Michael’s fingers seeping through his mittens, the softness of his cheek where Gerry’s lips pressed against it, the way snowflakes and streetlamps and the candles in every window got caught in his hair. 

But there it was: the door, chipped yellow paint and scratched wood, heavy and unyielding as ever. He sighed, sank back against it. Closed his eyes. It was cold, the bitter snowless cold that had always been his least favorite part of winter. The air smelled like gasoline and rotten firewood and he was so tired and so miserable. 

“Michael,” he mumbled, and the name tasted like longing and regret. “Michael, darling. I miss you.”

Michael did not answer. The city did not answer. The cold stars behind their blanket of light pollution did not answer. Gerry was very quiet for a very long time, and then he went home. 

Michael’s boots were filled with snow and his hair was falling in his face and there were hands on his neck and chin and his glasses had been knocked off some time ago. 

It felt clean. Surgical. It hurt, and it was violent and brutish and it tore his skin and his veins but it felt like an operation. He felt himself lose blood, felt his arteries pull tight with it, felt the twinge in his skin right next to the place where it burned with tearing. Felt himself drain. Barely felt himself collapse, the patches clouding his eyes as familiar as the numbness in his hands. 

Gerry would catch him. It wouldn’t be the first time. 

Gerry did not catch him. 

He woke up bruised and dizzy and lightheaded, bracing himself against the alley wall. Something was wrong. He felt pale — he looked pale, but he felt it too, something sick and anaemic twitching lines between his skin and his heart. Everything shook, everything was faint and dizzy and candy-soft, sickly-soft. His mouth felt sharp.

He missed Gerry. He wasn’t certain how long he had been without Gerry, or where Gerry had gone, or even what had happened — he remembered snow, and Gerry’s hand in his, and something shifting, dark against a dark wall. It was a blur, after that. The memories hurt. 

Everything hurt. He looked down at his hands and they were shaking; usually he could feel his tremors but he hadn’t noticed until he saw. They looked wrong; too pale, bloodless. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew what that meant.

“Gerry?” he whispered, and of course there was no answer. The snow was gone save for some melting puddles, slush dripping down drainpipes and dropping heavy from the roofs. He needed shelter. He needed a place to go that was warm and dry and safe where he could see to himself. He  _ needed  _ to know where Gerry was, and if he was safe or if he was like Michael, lost somewhere with sharp things in his mouth and pinched hollows under his skin. 

It took a minute, when he stumbled out of the alley and into the street, to notice what was off. Tripping under the streetlamps, wandering past the dark glassy surfaces of shop doors and empty windows — he was almost surprised that he noticed it at all; he would have thought it’d be such a little thing, the lack of movement.

He was the only thing that stirred. No tagalong reflection, warped and shadowed in the black glass. No shadow sticking to his feet. He was alone and he left no mark on the world around him. He wondered what it felt like to have your blood run cold, and the same part of him that had recognized the paleness in his hands knew that it was too late to find out.

Now he was afraid. He was stone inside, and his hand scrabbled for his coat buttons and under his shirt and he laid it against skin that felt cold and dead and nothing inside of him moved. No familiar press of his heart, no gentle reassuring rhythm like something soft in the cavern of his chest was tapping back. 

Almost dreamlike, now: if he was panicking, it was far away, and he was living in the tips of his fingers as he moved them to his throat, his wrist, the soft place just under his jaw. Looking for what he knew he wouldn’t find. Looking in case maybe it was the cold or the shake in his bone-white hands that was making him miss it.

He was far, far away from the clamour of his mind when he felt himself open his mouth. It was meant to be a scream — he thought it was, at least, though he wasn’t really in charge of what his body was doing — but it came out somewhere between a breath and a sob, a choked wheezing gasp for air that went on and on, and then he realized his lungs weren’t moving either and sank down against the wall, not breathing, heart still and calm and dead, hands shaking violently. 

He raised a hand to his mouth, felt the points of fangs without surprise. It was  _ fitting _ , really, he thought bitterly. He hated that. Fitting that he would fail in this too; fitting that he would become the thing he had wanted to end. There had been nothing for him to do so he had done nothing right, and now he was here and broken and he wanted to believe he was not himself anymore but he knew he was.

He missed Gerry Keay. He wanted warm hands caressing his face, holding him close. He wanted that voice in his ear, sweet and bitter and wry. He wanted to be looked at like he had answers, like he was capable, like he  _ was  _ a solution instead of a wreck on a rain-scarred street. Faith and trust and confidence and something in his eyes like worship when he looked at Michael, and they had burrowed under his ribs and burned there, sparks or seeds and Michael had felt adored.

Sick with himself, he stood up and started walking, deeper into the dark thrumming heart of the city where the colors buzzed like cicadas and flakes of paint and neon light left trails of shadow behind them as they fell. He needed somewhere to hide.

It became a habit. Gerry’s knees were scraped from the clamber down the side of the house and he’d torn more than one pair of jeans, but he needed something more than wallpaper and hardwood floors and the way his mother smiled slightly when she rolled her eyes. Winter faded into spring, and Michael had loved spring. The only sad thing about it, according to Michael, was that oranges were out of season, and he loved oranges. Gerry remembered him with his face buried in a lilac; remembered kissing him for the second time in the hollow of a rhododendron that had just begun to bloom, dirt on both their hands from scrambling under the low branches. It had left a smudge on Michael’s cheek where Gerry had held him and he had apologized but Michael only laughed and brushed it off and said propriety was overrated anyway and pushed him down gently and kissed his breath away. 

This year spring swarmed out of the ground, tuberous and pale, the shoots of flowers like maggots crawling everywhere out of the earth. It felt sick and wrong and Gerry knew it wasn’t because the women outside the general store sighed and breathed in the air and said  _ love that spring smell _ and  _ isn’t it nice to see the world coming back to life  _ and  _ I can’t imagine anything lovelier than flowers and birdsong, can you? _ — but it felt wrong, it felt like a mockery or an illusion or a disease. 

He stayed inside all day and at night he tried to pretend that he couldn’t hear the new leaves swishing in the trees or the soft song of the nightbirds as he walked into the city. 

Everything for months had reminded him of Michael. He hated that. Mary had said something about  _ moving on _ , and when the search parties had given up there had been speeches and formal regret and a candlelit vigil outside the public library. He had attended in some kind of desperate hope that it would help, that maybe finally he’d find some solace in one of the rote stencilled rituals that had characterized his childhood, and of course he had not — it had left him feeling worse, empty, and so bitterly lonely. The steps of the library were littered with candles and he remembered Michael’s hand in his, pulling him inside and saying  _ no, I promise, it’s great, we’ll pick out a book and I can read to you _ . Faint in the dark windows he could see the outlines of bookshelves and he remembered pressing Michael against them, kissing him until they had heard footsteps approaching and sprung apart, and Michael had been blushing and holding back giggles as he pretended to examine a book. He felt guilty at the memory, for dwelling on touch and desire when he had come to mourn; but he missed holding Michael because it had  _ mattered _ . Kissing Michael was kissing for affection, for trust, for just another way to say everything they had already said aloud. Holding Michael had not been to hold a body but to hold the lifeforce of a person he loved so deeply — the shoulders that slouched because he was nervous to be seen, the face that blushed easily because he was alive with emotion, the arms that looked frail but were strong with helping others or staggering home with an armful of books. 

And worse still was the quiet solemn formality of the vigil, because Michael had loved this place. He’d run up the steps like coming home, waved to the librarians who had smiled behind their desks, chattered as he walked between the shelves with such familiarity, grey eyes bright and smile incandescent. Later he’d sat leaning against the outer wall as the afternoon sun painted gold curtains over the day and let Gerry rest his head on his shoulder while Michael read to him. His voice — Gerry missed it, clung to it, tried so hard to make it echo in his ears, the way his syllables were so precious and his consonants so clear and his vowels so strange. He wished he had thought of it when he kissed Michael’s neck, wished he’d considered that he was kissing his throat, the passages that housed the voice that Gerry so adored. There was so much he would have thought of and so much he would have done if he had had more time.

The city. The city at night was blue and red and golden and beautiful and hummed louder as spring came, the air growing warm and thick. Music echoed from apartment windows and streetcorners, swimming through the viscous air and burrowing into the sides of buildings if it didn’t fall first on human ears. It helped Gerry feel a little less alone. Still, he was lonely — he wasn’t even certain why he came to the city anymore, having long since abandoned hope of finding Michael. He still passed by the door every day, still paused to wrench the knob and hammer at the heavy wood, which refused even to splinter. 

He told himself he had abandoned hope. It was surprisingly easy to ignore the fact that that was a blatant lie. 

But still, the city was as frightening as it was lovely, and Gerry traced the red-brick walls of the buildings and wondered if he would find something else, something that wasn’t Michael. He hadn’t forgotten the vampires, and the hunt seemed a little emptier without Michael there — Michael had always made it easier to have something to fight for — but he wouldn’t be opposed to following through on the original plan. He was angry. He was many things before he was angry — sad, scared, confused, so breakingly lonely — but it was there too, fury and vitriol simmering just below his skin, eating through his flesh and bone like acid. It wouldn’t hurt to have something to hurt. 

Nobody seemed certain how to hurt a vampire. The cheap paper magazines in the general store rambled of silver bullets and wooden stakes in bright red and yellow fonts, but it seemed contrived. It wasn’t even clear how human they were, or whether they were dead or alive, or if they could die at all. One tabloid had suggested feeding them garlic powder and Gerry and Michael had laughed over it in Michael’s bedroom where the carpet was soft and candy-pink and the lights were warm. 

It didn’t matter. He had a sharp stick in his rucksack and a silver pocketknife in his front pocket, and there was enough bile in his heart to keep him fighting for a week. He didn’t much care if he lost or won; he just wanted something to tear at. 

The fact that Michael had never been found — not even a trace of him in the wet icy streets the next morning — hung on him, heavy and chill. He didn’t know much about kidnappings and killers, but he knew vampires were rumored to be silent, clean, elegant in their captures and their slayings. It would explain the way he hadn’t noticed, hadn’t even realized anything was wrong until that muffed half-shout and the kicking of Michael’s boots. It would explain his negligence, his carelessness, his failure. 

Maybe he just wanted an explanation. 

The route was familiar by now, every dip and fall in the tarmac an instinct under his boots. He knew the light that blinked on the corner of seventh street, a peculiar shade of purple, almost lilac. Knew the crocuses that had budded in the cracked base of a building further up the block. Counted the swivels of a video camera on the side of a department store; listened again and again to the repeated jingle of the defunct bell on the deli, the slap of a loose piece of plastic awning against the florist’s windows. 

Knew intimately the point at which he turned into shadows and blackness; knew better still the place where the darkness had peeled away and snatched his Michael.

Knew that it would be empty and abandoned. 

Saw with sick dread in the pit of his stomach that it was not. 

He stopped moving all at once, stationary under the weak flicker of the last streetlamp. Someone was hunched in front of the door — too vague a figure to make out though the light almost glinted off of it. The curve and slight hollow of a cheek, the ragged edge of a coat, the mess of tangled blond hair. 

Gerry felt his heart pick up, felt that sick desperate knot rise to his throat. He didn’t dare. He couldn’t — wouldn’t — shouldn’t dare to hope. 

But Michael had always made hopelessness impossible. 

“Michael?”

It was a wrench to his heart. Twisting the pointless veins, ripping it wet and useless from its cavity. It was a javelin, an anvil, something warm and silver shot into his chest to burn and burrow. Sweet and bitter and wry, but right now it just sounded broken and afraid. 

He didn’t turn his head to look at Gerry. He didn’t know what to do. Every part of him screamed for that voice, the cold tunnels that would never vanish from beneath his skin begging for something to fill them, his ears so long plagued by the sound and silence of the city longing to be flooded again with Gerry’s voice, with whispered words and gentle affections and adorations poured into him like honey, close and vital and personal. 

But his teeth were still stained with blood from the last victim he had helped to drain — he never took his own, relied on the seconds and leftovers of better hunters than himself — and his hands were cold and shaking and useless, and he was filthy, worthless, cruel and Gerry would hurt worse to see him like this. 

“M— Michael? Is that … is it you?” Oh, he ached. Gerry was so soft, his voice so nervous in the dark, though he’d never, never admit it. He didn’t have a hand to hold. Michael’s fingers twitched. He wanted to turn, wanted to cry, wanted to run at Gerry and pick him up and spin him off the ground, wanted to bury his hands in his hair and kiss him until he needed to breathe and then again when his lungs were full. 

Part of him, maybe, wanted to drink Gerry dry and hold him close while he got used to shaking, or maybe until they both grew steady and cold together, and that part of him made him sick. 

He did not turn. “Go,” he said, and he didn’t want Gerry to hear his voice because he knew Gerry knew it — worse, knew Gerry loved it, remembered Gerry kissing his shoulder while he read and murmuring “I’d follow anywhere if you just kept talking” while the sun crashed burning out of the sky and spring birds wheeled over the library. 

“Michael!” There was nothing in his voice but relief — no hesitation, no fear, not a shred of doubt and Michael recoiled, thought about turning to run but it was too late —  _ oh,  _ he thought,  _ oh no _ — because Gerry was there, wrapping him up in his arms, grabbing his face with that sweet gentle intensity, and he felt like a fire, he felt like the sun, he was warm and his hands were dry and calloused against Michael’s cheeks and Michael could feel the heat of his body and wanted nothing more than to let it melt him away into nothing. 

“Michael?” There it was. Michael almost laughed —  _ there  _ it was, the hesitation and the fear and the doubt and something maybe akin to terror. “You’re — oh god — no, no, no — no, please no, you’re not, you’re not — oh,  _ fuck. _ ”

He had let go of Michael’s face and pushed himself backward, braced against the opposite wall. The night was loud with the falsified cicada-buzz of the city and the air was probably warm but Michael was always cold and Gerry, perfect unconquerable Gerry Keay was looking at him with  _ open  _ terror. 

Neither of them spoke. Michael could hear Gerry’s breath coming in labored gasps, and was all too aware of the stillness around himself, the unstirred stagnant air, the silence a dead giveaway. 

“I’m sorry, Gerry,” he said, and his voice was hoarse with disuse and pitched just a little too high. He could feel the died blood cracking on his lips and hated it, knew Gerry could see it. 

“What happened to you?” he said. 

Michael shook his head slowly. Shrugged. 

“You’re not Michael.”

He couldn’t be Michael. This pale figure, just a little too gaunt, tangle-curled and filthy, his coat smudged and tattered and stained with the same dark liquid that was drying at the corners of his mouth. If this was Michael, his Michael Shelley, Gerry wasn’t sure if he was afraid for him or afraid of him, or which was worse. 

But it was. He knew that. His eyes were the same low sparkling grey and the cant of his mouth was the same and his hands where they twitched and clutched at one another in front of him were the same. Long and slender-fingered and delicately veined, though something seemed wrong with them now, like they had collapsed. 

He was undeniably a vampire. And that hurt, that twisted something hot and guilty in Gerry’s stomach, fear and hatred and distrust wrapping around the more instinctive desire, almost a need to take this fragmented Michael into his arms, to make him warm and comb his hair and whisper soft heavy reassurances in his ear and promise he was okay, sweet, beautiful, safe. 

“I am. I’m sorry. I’m Michael. You can go — please just leave. I w — I won’t hurt you. I won’t let anyone else hurt you.”

It was Michael. Easily, certainly Michael, with the broken apologies and the mumbled reassurances. It was impossible to leave, and it was impossible to fear him. 

“Michael,” he said, and then he didn’t know what to say. Michael was shaking his head and looked near tears, collapsing in on himself and Gerry hated seeing him like this, felt sick at the fear in his eyes and the anguish sunk deep in every line of his face. 

He did the only thing he knew how to do. Pressed forward, gathered Michael’s hands into his own, and kissed them. Gentle and lingering and he felt Michael shudder and moved forward, moved to kiss the tears from his cheeks and the corners of his eyes. 

“No — God, no, Gerry, stop, I’m — I’m so hungry, please don’t, I’ll hurt you —” Michael’s hands on his shoulders, pushing him back, weak and scrabbling for purchase but they were  _ shaking  _ so badly.

Gerry backed away, more to stop Michael hurting himself than anything else. He slumped against the wall, and again that unnatural stillness caught Gerry off guard: there was no panting for breath, no steadying inhale or hand pressed soothing against his heart. “Go,” he murmured, and Gerry stayed, cross-legged and quiet, wondering how to phrase a sentence that was wrong in his mind, the start and end of it different, stitched together with something else entirely. 

“Have you killed anyone?” he said at last, and he hated himself for that because it hadn’t been what he’d meant to ask at all. Michael looked up at him, miserable. 

“No. I’ve been surviving on whatever… leftovers people will give me. And … and just if they’re turning. Not killing them.”

He sounded so tired, and the skin under his eyes was dark and it stretched over his cheekbones and Gerry hated to see him like this. 

“Come home,” he said. “Come home, Michael, I don’t care. We can f—” his voice was breaking — “we can find a way to hide you but just — please come home. I’ve missed you so much.” It broke then, finally, and it felt good to let tears gather hot in the corners of his eyes and spill down his face, because he was crying for Michael, not out of fear or sorrow but with relief and concern and it felt so  _ good  _ to worry about him for something known and specific again. 

He heard fabric shuffle across the alley and a moment later felt Michael’s hand on his arm, trembling and hesitant. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” he mumbled into his hands, and it was muffled by sobbing but he hoped it sounded sincere. “Come here and kiss me.”

Michael laughed at that, low and bitter. It was an unfamiliar tone from his throat but the cadence was the same as ever and welcome. “I can’t, love. Like I said I — I’d just end up hurting you. It’s been … a while since I had more than someone else’s scraps.”

_ Drain me _ , said some desperate part of Gerry, but he thought better of saying it aloud. “We’ll find you something,” he said at last. “Do you have … contacts?”

Michael rolled his eyes. “I’m a scavenger, Ger. Of course not.”

A long quiet. “How much do you need?”

“Not a lot. A couple tablespoons usually does the trick for a day or two.”

Gerry sighed. “So I can’t prick myself with a thumbtack and—”

“ _ God,  _ no. Gerry. Gerry, don’t even — don’t even think like that.”

“Then what?”

“Come back for me tomorrow. Same time and place. I can find something before then but I don’t want you here when I do. Please. I promise I’ll be back.”

And Michael Shelley had never been a good liar, and he sounded sincere, but it had been months since Gerry had walked out of the city without him for the first time and he wouldn’t let it happen again. 

“Find someo—  _ something _ tonight. I’ll stay with you and I — I won’t watch when it actually happens, if you don’t want me to. But I’m not going anywhere.”

Michael’s face softened — that old beautiful smile and moonlight catching in his eyes — and he looked anguished and afraid still but comforted just slightly, enough for Gerry to feel it when he took his hand and let Gerry support him as he led the way through the labyrinthine city. 

There was rarely anyone feeding this late, but the late-night seafarers on the wharfs were occasionally viable prey in the wee hours, and Michael clutched Gerry’s hand as they wandered the docks until he saw a shadow duck out of sight. 

“Wait here.” He let go, cast a glance behind him at Gerry. The fly-specked light of the wharflights, slightly green, made his face sickly pale, and he looked confused and forlorn and Michael looked away. 

He recognized the woman feeding on the hapless sailor and relaxed a little; she had been kind to him before, and when he mumbled a greeting she looked up with a grin, teeth dripping slick and sanguine in the shadow of the boat. 

“Help yourself,” she whispered, and Michael smiled and nodded at her and bent to drink. His blood was salty and metallic and good enough to fill, and Michael drank to satisfaction and left with a slight bow. Her eyes glittered harsh in a stray beam of lamplight and she returned to finish him herself. 

Gerry was waiting where Michael had left him, tapping his fingers idly against his wrist, and it was an instinct to step close and steady them. He caught sight of Michael as he was wiping the last of the blood from his face with a sleeve — he hadn’t learned yet how to drink neatly — and they made eye contact for a moment over Michael’s hand. He dropped it ruefully and tried for a reassuring smile. He felt better now that he was full, and maybe Gerry could tell because he looked equal parts relieved and afraid again. 

“Are you sure you want to bring me back?” asked Michael. 

“Yes.”

“We can’t let anyone else see me.”

“I know.”

“Thank you, Gerry.”

Gerry nodded. “C’mon. Let’s go before it gets light.”

It was nearly dawn by the time they were home, but Gerry’s mother slept late and deeply and he ran a bath despite Michael’s whispered protests. “You’ve been in that city for months. Get in.”

Michael shrugged off his coat, stripped himself of clothes that were stained and tattered beyond recognition, and Gerry watched him step into the water with a vague sense of satisfaction, like maybe he’d done something right. 

“Can I join you?” he asked after a moment, because Michael looked nervous and unsure of himself, knees pulled to his chest. He nodded hesitantly. 

Gerry knew this. After so many months grasping with nothing to hold on to, he knew how to take care of Michael. How to run washcloth across his face, his arms, his collarbone and the planes of his back; the scent of some sweet lavender-vanilla soap Michael had given him over half a year ago. Michael’s hair in his hands, Michael sighing and leaning into the caresses, Michael losing himself, as far as Gerry could tell, in the feeling of being touched, being held. Forgetting for a moment why and what he was, and that was good. It was what Gerry had hoped for. 

By the time he was done Michael was clean and relaxed entirely against him, soft and almost warm despite the unnatural clamminess of his skin. “Thank you,” he mumbled, and Gerry kissed his shoulder and felt him shiver. 

“Can I — may I kiss you properly now?” he mumbled, and Michael tensed a little. “I’m not scared of you, love.”

“That’s what worries me,” said Michael. “I think you should be.”

“Come on.” He helped Michael to his feet, wrapped him in a towel and pulled the drain. When they were dry and Gerry had made sure no traces of them were left in the bathroom they retreated to Gerry’s bedroom where Michael borrowed his pajamas and looked delicate and pale against the black fabric. 

Sitting on the edge of the bed he took Michael by the shoulders and looked at him, his face drawn but softened and he was still so beautiful. It was a harsher beauty now but Gerry loved it just as much. “I can’t, Michael. I can’t be scared of you. I just — I trust you. I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped. If you don’t want me, that’s — I’ll be fine. But if you want to kiss me, come and kiss me.”

And Michael laughed at that, sad and a little afraid but undeniably joyful too, and then he was there because of course he was there, gentle and deliberate and it was the same as ever, and that familiar note of insistence that had always accompanied Michael’s kisses grew until they broke apart and Gerry took a moment to catch his breath. “I love you,” murmured Michael, and Gerry nodded and pulled him close again, pulled him down until he felt safe, blanketed by Michael’s body, the weight of him between Gerry and the rest of the world. 

Michael felt disoriented. The cold never left from where it lingered in his bones and the empty passages under his skin, but he was safe, warm, and Gerry’s clothes were soft and Gerry’s hands were soft and Gerry’s mouth was soft and his mind was reeling again with how quickly everything changed. He was lost to Gerry and he knew Gerry was lost to him and that was good, that was right and he had missed it so badly and then there was the sound of a door opening down the hall and Gerry cursed. 

The sun had risen while they were distracted and Michael didn’t have time to linger on how Gerry looked in the spring-golden light before Gerry was pressing him into the closet, kissing his forehead and shutting the door. He heard Gerry cross the room and the sagging of bedsprings, hurried rustling of his sheets. Quiet for a moment and then the sound of Gerry’s bedroom door opening and his mother’s voice — god, Michael had forgotten her voice, and he didn’t like it — casting him a disinterested  _ good morning  _ and the reminder to be downstairs in ten minutes for breakfast. 

Gerry must have nodded because the door clicked shut again, and then there was a long, unbearable silence before Gerry swung himself out of bed and padded across the room to the closet again. 

“Sorry,” he said as soon as the door was open. “I lost track of time—”

“It’s fine. So did I. What are we going to do?”

Gerry shrugged. “I mean, Mary doesn’t really — come in my room often, as far as I know. You’d probably be safe just living here. Do you … ” a flicker of uncertainty crossed his face. “Do you need to … eat? Aside from blood, I guess.”   
Michael shook his head. “You don’t want me here, though, Gerry. I’m — I — you  _ can’t  _ keep trusting me like this. It’s going to end badly, you’re going to end up caught — or like me, or —”  _ dead _ , he thought but didn’t say. “I appreciate it. I really do. And I love you more than anything but I can’t — you — we can’t, Gerry.” 

“Hey.” Gerry’s hands, warm almost to the point of burning against his cold face. “Hey, it’s okay. Michael, you didn’t ask for this, and if you think I’m giving up on you you’re a fucking idiot. I’ll make you comfortable here, and we’ll find a way to keep you safe and hidden. We can go into the city as often as you need to feed. It’s fine. We’ll be  _ fine _ .”

They would not be fine. Michael was terrified, more of himself than anything else, and he was absolutely certain that they would not be fine. 

“Are you okay to stay here for today?” asked Gerry.

Michael sighed. “Yes. Sure. I’ll stay.”

“Don’t leave. Don’t you dare climb out that fucking window while I’m away.”

It had been his plan, and Gerry couldn’t stop him — not really — but he wouldn’t follow through with it now. He knew he couldn’t lie twice to Gerry’s face. “Fine.” 

“Be good to yourself, Michael. You’re still you. And I’m still yours.” Fierce. Michael loved it when he was like this.    
“Yours, too,” he mumbled, and Gerry kissed him and was gone. He sat down on the closet floor and did nothing to stop the shaking in his hands.

It was a long day without Gerry, and Michael didn’t stray from the closet. He was hesitant to stand in the room in case Mary got home and came in without warning; hesitant to stand by the window lest someone walking below should recognize him. Everyone here knew him. He wondered if they had mourned. 

When Gerry came home he was alive with energy, cheeks flushed and eyes tired but excited. “I’ve missed you,” he said. “I’ve missed you so much.” Mumbling into Michael’s shoulder. “But I’m here now! Are you hungry? Do we need to go into the city again?”

Michael considered. He wasn’t starved but the prickling in his veins was back and the shaking in his hands had gotten just slightly worse. It was fine. He didn’t want to drag Gerry out night after night.

“I can wait. Tomorrow, maybe?” 

“You’re sure?”

He nodded, and Gerry smiled. “Good, okay.  _ Can  _ you still eat? Regular food, I mean. Do you want some?”

“I … don’t know. I didn’t try.”

Gerry nodded, considering, and there was a tightness to his brow that made Michael think he was worrying, somewhere in the back of his head. Gerry had never liked to see him afraid, and Michael was doing a poor job sparing him the details of his months alone. 

“I’m fine. If you’ve any to spare, there’s no harm in trying. Thank you, honey.”

A grin, and Gerry was away down the stairs and back in moments with a couple of tangerines. 

“I didn’t think you liked tangerines?” asked Michael, taking one.

“I didn’t,” said Gerry, without elaboration. He dropped the peeling of his own haphazardly on the floor. The scent of it in the air was intoxicating, delicious; Michael had missed it. 

“You do now?”

“I made sure Mary kept them around a lot this winter. I got used to them.”

Gerry was trying and failing to sound nonchalant, and his face was red and it made the empty space in Michael’s chest ache, like maybe his heart would have fluttered if it ever did anything anymore.

He watched Gerry eat a segment of his tangerine. Lips turned up just slightly in an expression drifting somewhere between contentment and melancholy, eyes closed. It looked vaguely like he was having a spiritual experience and Michael wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. 

The tangerines were sweet and it felt strange, something good and soft and ordinary after so many months of puncture wounds and the metallic sting of blood on his cracked lips. He smiled at Gerry and watched him relax, the frantic energy dropping with his shoulders. He was calm. Michael felt calm. It was okay.

It was mesmerizing, watching Michael. He was so close to what he had been, but — maybe it was the months of scavenging and maybe it was the thing he had become — there was something off. The way he carried himself, his nervousness replaced by something Gerry would sooner describe as wariness, and an elegance to it now. Sharp-edged and careful and precise, like he was balancing on a knife’s edge. It was the way he smiled, a little harsher than before, a little sad and a little hungry and far past fear. His hands trembled but it looked somehow as though they were shaking in anticipation rather than distress. 

And kissing him. Gerry loved it — he had always loved it, but it was different now. Particularly when Michael’s lips found their way to his neck and for a moment it was relief and bliss and familiarity and Gerry breathed in sharp and then Michael gasped too and pulled away, apologies already spilling over. 

“It’s fine,” said Gerry when he’d caught up. “Come back. It’s fine. I trust you.”

Michael’s face was alight with incredulity but Gerry saw the flick of his eyes to his throat and it looked like desire, not hunger, so he nodded. It was enough of an invitation to bring Michael close again, and it was intoxicating to trust like this, the knowledge of his lifesblood passing under the press of Michael’s mouth and the overwhelming safety that was Michael regardless. 

Every other night now they went into the city, hand in hand, and Michael’s skin was cold but the air was warm and the way his hair was a soft gentle halo in the streetlights was warm and he looked at Gerry warmly and that was more than enough. The stars spun behind the curtain of light cast up by the city, and they couldn’t see them, but the knowledge was nice. Michael left Gerry standing in the dark, pressed kisses to each of his wrists, lingering and deliberate above the veins — a promise,  _ I can but I will not  _ — and vanished into the dark to return bloody-mouthed and grim minutes later. 

Gerry thought him beautiful. He knew he shouldn’t, but the ruby smudged against his skin was undeniably attractive, and Gerry kissed his mouth and felt him smile into it, reassured. He knew what Michael thought must happen, saw the resolute sorrow in his eyes every time he showed his face after drinking. And because  _ I’m not going anywhere because of this  _ felt like too many words for every other night, Gerry took him by the collar and kissed them into his skin instead. 

As ever, necessity became routine became ordinary, and it was rarely more difficult than their hunts had been. The city crawled with people and vampires numbered greater by the day; it did not take Michael long to find people willing to share. Twice only he went too long without drinking, and then on the way into the city his hands shook worse than ever and his fingernails, too-sharp, bit crescents into Gerry’s arm. The blood pooling on his skin was nearly too much, and if for a moment he was afraid, it was an intrigued kind of fear. Mary was weighing on him and he knew he would not survive long as a runaway if he needed food the way he did now. 

Michael apologized over and over despite his reassurances that it was fine, and later when the wound was healed he kissed Gerry’s arm and whispered against it, words Gerry couldn’t make out but they sounded sweet and reverent. 

And there were long afternoons drowsy in Gerry’s room, sprawled on the bed or the hardwood floor, talking and laughing and drawing patterns in the air or on each other’s skin. Michael read poetry, and his voice wasn’t quite how it had been before — it had the same lilt to it, the same odd gentle cadence that Gerry loved so much, but it had gone colder, somehow, and vague around the edges. It was nice. It felt like a thunderstorm breaking the banks of a river, and Gerry lay with his head on Michael’s unmoving chest and listened to the words rush under and over and around him like rain.

Summer came, an explosion of leaves and sunlight breaking over the earth and the incessant buzz of cicadas. The sun set later and rose earlier and their nightly excursions were pressed a little shorter, but it was fine — laughing under the trees through the humid air, Michael too cold and Gerry too distracted to be bothered by the heat. The city emptied out a little with people on their summer travels, and the nights got brighter, dizzier, more full of music on every street corner. Musicians wandered in like ghosts and played low and raucous, saxophone and violin and guitars with broken strings, and Gerry and Michael would clasp hands almost on instinct, dance soft and swift and spontaneous in the dark and the dappling of neon.

One night the music started just after Michael had fed, a full trio painting the air crimson and gold and blue in some quick-tempoed minor key. He staggered out of the alley, blood-drunk, eyes with that strange dark illumination Gerry had gotten so used to, and he looked disoriented and beautiful and Gerry reached for him with as much eagerness as care. That dance was a fever dream and a night terror and a rhapsody, and at the end of it Michael held him close and smiled against his forehead. “Thank you,” he said, and Gerry did not ask for what.

And then it was getting harder again to find food for Michael. That could not be denied. With the shorter nights and the smaller city and the population of those who needed to feed still growing with every sunset, pickings were sparse, and scavenging had never really been advantageous. 

“I can’t,” said Michael, when Gerry suggested hunting for himself. And Gerry’s stomach twisted with worry even as he felt his heart swell with admiration, with awe for this morality that endured past hunger, past death, past wasting away with pinched veins and wax-white skin. Still. It was not good. 

“Don’t you — I mean, don’t you kind of have to? It’s not like we can break into a hospital or —”

Michael bit his lip, and Gerry watched a fang break skin and stared at him. There was no blood, but they should have been retracted.

“You’re hungry,” he said, and it sounded more accusatory than he had intended it to.

“I know,” said Michael, and he sounded absolutely miserable.

The day dragged on, hot sandpaper until the sun ran like oil down the sky and dripped into the sea.

When they entered the city that night, the air felt electric. A storm was about to break, though whether it was the sky or the twisting glowing store signs or the high glitter of the apartment windows was anyone’s guess. The air hummed, and Michael looked at Gerry with something like fear for the first time since spring. 

“We should go,” he said, but Gerry saw the flash of his teeth, too-sharp and yellowing in the lamplight, and shook his head. 

“You need to drink, Michael. I’m not having you starve.”

He said nothing, but let Gerry forge ahead. Every few steps he stopped, turned, checked to make sure Michael was still following, a ghost bathed in yellow light, before pushing on through the city, which yawned lightning-pink and diamond and sable ahead. 

They found someone, eventually. By the time they got there and bargained with the person already crouched over the body she was mostly dry, but Michael was so hungry and for the first time he forgot to wave Gerry away. 

He knew he should have left. He knew Michael didn’t want him seeing this, but curiosity burned sickly green in the space between his ribs and behind his temples and he stayed, watched Michael bend and tilt the woman’s head to bite down and drink the last dark stains from under her skin. 

He was so gentle, so methodical about it, his face almost apologetic for all its hunger. It hurt to watch. His Michael Shelley, so determined to do good that he was swallowed by it and now he choked down other people’s blood in turn, and he was so reluctant and took such care to leave the woman propped up against the wall, a cold hand pressed against her forehead, muttering some quiet reassurance that Gerry couldn’t quite make out.

When he stood and turned back to Gerry there was only the barest fleck of blood at the corner of his mouth, and before his eyes had had time to fully widen with shock and shame Gerry reached for him and kissed it away.

“I love you, Michael,” he said, because it was still easier than explaining all the reasons Michael wasn’t at fault and Gerry didn’t care what he was. 

“I love you, too,” said Michael, and when they left he cast a last sorry glance at the woman who was just beginning to stir against the alley floor.

They sat for a long time on the wharf that night, watching the lights dance over the hazy surface of the water. Gerry picked pieces of wood from one of the pilings and tossed them into the water, careful not to let the splinters break skin and both overwhelm Michael with the scent of blood. Michael leaned against him and Gerry felt the weariness, the exhaustion thick and heavy in his body, despite it being too light as a whole — Gerry could lift him easily; perhaps it was the lack of blood weighing him down.

“I don’t know what to do,” mumbled Michael, long after the moon had wheeled down under the horizon and the single bright star — probably a planet — that was visible from the city had shivered to life through the fog. “I’m sorry, Gerry, I’m going to die or I’m going to hurt someone and either way you’re — you’re not going to be able to live with me.” He laughed weakly through the strangled sound his voice made when he wanted to cry but could not. It was the turn of phrase, and Gerry loved that he loved speaking it even now.

He was very quiet for a long time.

Of course it was too much to ask. The near-nightly excursions into the city, the strain of watching Michael starve and what must have been the horror of watching him feed — it was too much for one person to go through. And when that person was Gerry Keay — bright, soft Gerry Keay who hid the way he sickened at death and paled at violence — it was worse, a thousand times worse because he would lie and say it didn’t bother him. It bothered Michael; he hated knowing that Gerry was fighting a losing battle with his decaying fragile form, that this had to end in death or murder or their near equivalents.

And the silence on the wharf herded the feeling closer, the persistent thought that Gerry had to give up on him or he would give up on Gerry for him. He didn’t know how, but he’d  _ need _ to if he went three days without more than a bare tablespoon of blood to sustain him again. 

He jumped when Gerry put his hand over his. So gentle, that touch, and so unexpected when Michael’s thoughts had unspooled themselves over the horizon, too far and too fast to remain here. 

Here, where Gerry was resolutely not looking at him and he was determinedly not looking at Gerry and Gerry was saying “then drink me.”

Quiet. He spoke quietly but assuredly and Michael lurched, turned to him so quickly and with such alarm that he nearly fell off the pier. “What did you just say?”   
Gerry steadied him on instinct and when he had caught Michael’s gaze he repeated it. “Drink me, Michael. Turn me. It’s — if I let you, it’s okay. Please. You need it and I need out and we’ll figure it out from there.”

“ _ No _ ,” said Michael, and he hoped his disgust with the idea was clear in his tone. “Gerry, you don’t — it’s not — it makes you  _ empty _ , Gerry. There’s this … this tightness in you, you can feel every one of your veins and they’re hollow and flat and —”

“I don’t  _ care _ , Michael. You’re managing. I can handle it. I need — I need  _ out _ , I need out of Mary’s house and I want you with me. This is the best of both worlds. Come on, we’ll be okay. We’ll manage together. We’ll figure out a system and we’ll find a way to feed — we can share, we can get far away from here and start somewhere else, it’ll be easier when I’m not fucking  _ trapped  _ —”

It wasn’t that simple. Michael knew Gerry knew it wasn’t that simple. They wouldn’t need food but they would need to find places to sleep, shelter from the rain, some new city far away where blood was plentiful. They would need so many things they had barely a clue how to get. 

But Michael was so hungry, and Gerry Keay with the light in his eyes was so very difficult to refuse.

They were standing at the train tracks and the city was only a drone, muffled behind the trees. Michael’s hands shook as he took hold of Gerry, cupping the back of his head, bracing his other hand on his shoulder. 

“Okay. Okay.” A bare whisper, a soft terrified reassurance to himself or Gerry or the night. “I love you. Gerry? I love you so much.”   
Gerry smiled at him. He was lovely, a river of curls and storm-dark eyes in the flash of the station light. “I love you too.”

A beat, as Gerry pushed the curtain of his hair aside.

“Are you sure?”

“Michael.”

He was still for a second, and Gerry thought maybe he was trying to draw breath, a steadying impossible inhale, his lips parted slightly to the night air. “Okay.”

Michael bent his head, and Gerry felt lips skim his neck, press tender against the place where it joined with his shoulder. Kisses, deliberate and soft and insistent and the crickets sang and the slightest breeze stirred the summer air. 

A short, sharp pain; a draining. Gerry felt himself go weak and faint and at the same time he felt Michael’s arm move firm to his waist, steadying him. He would not fall. 

The lights slipped, scored bright tracks into the sky before fading out entirely. He knew who would be there when he woke. The first right thing in the world, and it was his blood in Michael’s mouth and the trees yawning open to take them away.


End file.
